The Lost Tomb Vol. 1

Chapter 64: Bloody Inscription

I said to him, "Who knows what you've got up your sleeve? If you want to say something, then say it. But don't forget that we're still in trouble now. If it's irrelevant, then just forget about it."

"Don't worry," Fatty said to me, "what I'm about to say has a lot to do with our present situation. Weren't you listening to Little Brother just now? This corridor leading to the heavenly door is uphill, and the large room with the model of the heavenly palace is very tall, at least a dozen meters or so. Think about how deep this ancient tomb is. I figure the ceiling of that room is the top of the entire tomb so if we want to get out of here, then we should use our brains to get there!"

As soon as I heard this, my mind lit up and I quickly did some calculations. When we first swam down the tomb passage to enter this tomb, I had looked at the water pressure gauge. At that time, we were already thirteen meters below the seabed. The bottom of the pool where we were now was ten meters below that, so added together, we should be somewhere between twenty and thirty meters below the seabed. So, the ceiling of the room with the model of the Heavenly Palace on the Clouds must be less than ten meters below the seabed. It was exactly as Fatty had said.

I couldn't help but feel impressed. I had been so engrossed in the story that I didn't really pay attention to these kinds of details but Fatty had. Although this guy seemed reckless, his mind was actually pretty sharp. It looked like I wouldn't be able to hide anything from him in the future. Thinking of this, I said to them, "Fatty's actually got a good point this time, but it doesn't matter even if we know this information. We can't climb those ten meters to the ceiling with our bare hands. And even if we somehow manage it, we don't have any tools. It's not like we can dig through those layers of bricks with our hands. I think we still need to find some decent metal burial objects first and then implement our plan to dig a tunnel as soon as possible. If we linger any longer, I'm afraid we'll miss low tide."

Having said that, I actually didn't know what to do—as I moved through this ancient tomb, the only burial objects I saw were stone tools and porcelainware. There wasn't a single piece of metal as far as I could tell. It was so unusual that I vaguely felt that maybe the tomb owner had specially arranged it this way. So, the only thing left to do now was to look for some tools in that room with the model. If they weren't there, then we were really screwed.

Fatty laughed when he heard what I had to say, "I've already thought about it. Aren't there gold-plated bronze mirrors in that big room? You're also an antique dealer so you should know what these mirrors look like, right? They have solid, heavy legs that we can remove and use as hammers."

The description just now sounded vaguely familiar, but it was only after I heard him mention it that I remembered that I had actually handled this kind of thing before. I just couldn't remember what exactly it looked like. But when I saw how confident Fatty was and how he didn't seem to be lying, I couldn't help but calm down. "Ok," I said to him, "then it's settled. We need to hurry up and go before it's too late. But after we get to that room, don't touch anything. This place is full of traps and we still have long lives to live. It's not worth it to stay here for a few things belonging to a dead man!"

Fatty listened and nodded, saying that he wouldn't touch anything except for the bricks. I was afraid that he was still aiming for those night pearls so I repeated my warning not to touch anything several more times until he became annoyed. After that, I asked about the specific structure of the tomb again before telling them about any possible situations that might crop up and the necessary measures to be taken if they did. Then, the three of us found the heavenly door and walked straight into the narrow corridor. Fatty took the lead, I was in the middle, and Poker-Face brought up the rear.

I had already heard about this passage in Poker-Face's narrative earlier, but going in myself was a completely different feeling. I didn't notice it at first since it just felt like I was taking a nightly stroll down Shipi Lane in Xitang, Jiaxing(1)—although that was a little narrower—but after walking for a while, the lack of a visible entrance or exit had me starting to panic. I wasn't afraid of the darkness since I was walking in the middle, but the passage around us was too quiet. Plus, we were all wearing flippers(2) so our footsteps made pitter-patter sounds that echoed strangely down the narrow corridor. It almost seemed like a monster was following us. Fatty was insensitive to such things and didn't seem to feel nervous at all, but he did care about how narrow the passage was. He was so uncomfortable walking that he started complaining, "I don't know who the fuck built this stone corridor but they clearly discriminate against fat people! How can such a corridor leading to the heavenly door be so shabby? If all paths to heaven are like this, then Maitreya Buddha(3) shouldn't even bother going out."